From My Community Manager:“As marketer behind successful brands like Givenchy, YSL, Chanel, Lancaster, Jure Klepic looks at products differently to boldly crystallize marketing strategies that strongly resonate with consumers. He believes that social media is one of the fastest society-changing phenomenon seen in our lifetime. Through this website and his work, Jure hope to “poke” marketing planners into taking a new look at influence and innovation so they can use social media to get results.”

Last Friday, the enthralling Jure Klepic joined the Community Manager Hangout bunch as a featured guest. One of the most fascinating things that Jure explores and teaches is the impact of anthropology on marketing and community building. He explained early on that he talks with at least five different anthropologists on a daily basis and implements their findings into social strategies.

Jure’s reasoning behind getting into this area of research is extremely fascinating and should be taken into consideration by all marketers. He began by explaining the importance of understanding history, as it always repeats itself. “Everything old becomes new again sooner or later,” Klepic advised. He added that many brands fail to comprehend that there’s no sense in spending bilions of dollars to try and change peoples’ habits. “With anthropological research, we look for existing habits in certain categories and recommend to develop products that cater to these habits.”

In marketing and community building, it’s important to keep in mind that people will always act in certain ways. When building a product, or more appropriately for us, a community, anthropological research helps us to understand how people react to certain things and what methods of interaction are most likely to succeed. Knowing, studying, and understanding the existing habits of people is a integral part of connecting and building relationships. With the knowledge that anthropology can provide us, we can stop overcomplicating our efforts to sell and connect, and start focusing on the habitual behaviors that we can channel in our marketing and community building efforts.

You can - and should - check out the whole video of the conversation here: